"The
72-year-old former circus trapeze artist Burt
Lancaster delightfully plays the title role."

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Lee Philips ("Louis Armstrong: Chicago Style"/"Mae
West") is a long-time TV director. His
made-for-television biopic on the 19th-century
American showman Phineas Taylor Barnum (born 1810 and
died in 1891) is a straight-forward pic that
chronicles the flamboyant showman's success story
starting from early childhood as a poor shopkeeper in
Bethel, Connecticut, to his becoming a millionaire
circus owner. The 72-year-old former circus trapeze
artist Burt Lancaster delightfully plays the title
role. It's based on the story by Michael Norell &
Andy Siegel. The aim here is to tell the straight
story of showman extraordinaire, P. T. Barnum, and
dispel some myths that have become part of his legacy,
such as the showman never saying "There's a sucker
born every minute." His rebuttal to critics was often
"I am a showman by profession...and all the gilding
shall make nothing else of me."

It opens in 1883 and the 70-year-old Barnum is
attending the opening of Barnum & Bailey's
"Greatest Show on Earth" and pauses to tell his
colorful life story, as there's a flashback to when he
was a teenage shopkeeper and used deception to make a
sale and got involved with the lottery mania sweeping
the country to hustle worthless green bottles he got
in a swap. At 19 he married Charity Hallett (Laura
Press), his companion for the next 50 years. In 1835
the 25-year-old Barnum began as a showman with his
purchase and exhibition of a blind and almost
completely paralyzed black slave woman, Joyce Heth,
claimed by Barnum to have been the nurse of George
Washington, and to be over 160. This proved to be
untrue, because when she died her age was established
as only being 80. Undeterred by his critics, Barnum
began his first variety troupe called "Barnum's Grand
Scientific and Musical Theater"and when broke in 1841
still managed to work out a deal to buy Scudder's
American Museum, at Broadway and Ann Street, New York
City. He renamed it "Barnum's American Museum" with
the addition of exhibits and improvements in the
building, and it became a popular and money making
showplace. Barnum exhibited a midget called Charles
Stratton and had him act as "General Tom Thumb" ("the
Smallest Person that ever Walked Alone"). Tom was then
four years of age but was passed off as 11. The boy
was taught to imitate people from Hercules to Napoleon
and by five was drinking wine and by seven smoking
cigars for the paying public. Though exploited, Tom
Thumb maintained a good relationship with Barnum and
was free of bitterness. The showman became a very
wealthy man after bringing his Tom Thumb act to
Europe, and entertaining Queen Victoria of England. In
1850 Barnum engaged Jenny Lind (Hanna Schygulla), "the
"Swedish Nightingale," to sing in America for the
first time at $1,000 a night for 150 nights, and his
gamble paid off as he recouped his investment four
times. After a flurry of other hustling enterprises
such as exhibiting various freak acts in his 'Barnum's
American Museum,' he got into the circus business when
he was 61, in Wisconsin, in 1871, with William Cameron
Coup. The partners established "P. T. Barnum's Grand
Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan &
Hippodrome", a traveling circus, menagerie and museum
of "freaks." By 1872 he was billing it as "The
Greatest Show on Earth." Barnum eventually merged with
James Bailey and their innovated traveling circus by
rail was a success. The partners split up for the
second time in 1885 but reunited in 1888.

For a made-for-television movie, it has some fairly
good production sets but lacks dramatic firepower. But
for those who just want to know a little something
about Barnum, the undemanding pic should satisfy.